The Brotherhood: Blood (92 page)
Do I tell him about last night?
Could
he tell him? Could he honestly,
truly
admit to doing nothing but watching his knight master suffer through some post-traumatic reflex without doing a single thing? It wasn’t as though he’d abandoned him—he’d been no more than three feet away, either sleeping or keeping watch over the camp throughout the entire night. If anything, the only crime he’d committed was not doing more to try and help, and even then Nova had said to leave him be, to let him ‘come back’ when he was ready.
“I… what?” Miko asked, drawing Odin from his thoughts.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“If something happened, I want you to tell me.”
“Nothing happened, sir. You fell asleep—that’s all.”
“That’s all?”
This time, Odin couldn’t help but turn his head down. Shame having gotten the best of him, he sighed, took a deep breath, then expelled it before
forcing
himself to look back up. “You fell asleep with your eyes open, sir.”
The Elf pursed his lips. Suh a gesture didn’t indicate a natural response, especially given the creature’s usually-calm, stoic demeanor.
“Sir?” Odin ventured. “Tell me something wasn’t wrong with you last night. You were just
laying
there, looking at me like you’d gone out of your mind. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Nor should you have done anything,” the Elf replied. “To answer your question, Odin—no, nothing was wrong, nothing other than unnatural suffering.”
“This isn’t the first time you’ve done this.”
Shit.
There—the thing he’d wanted to say for so long, gone, out in the open and floating in midair.
Frowning, Miko reached up to run a hand aross his temple. He stopped to finger the flush of one eyebrow before returning his hand to his lap. “Pardon?” he asked.
Pardon?
Odin thought, somehow resisting the urge to laugh.
Did he
really
just say
pardon?
How could the Elf have
not
heard him?
“You did it in Neline after… you know… and here, the night we were watching the firebugs.”
“Firebugs?”
“Yeah. You don’t remember that?”
“No, actually—I don’t.”
Even I can remember that, and that was over a year ago.
Then again,
had
he remembered the incident because of the firebugs, or had it been because of the way Miko had acted that night—the way he’d unblinkingly stared at the creatures dancing amidst the clay huts, the way he couldn’t respond with more than a few choice words at a time?
“Sir… do you remember telling me how you sometimes act the way you do because of your mixed blood?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“Do you think that might be the reason you acted the way you did last night?”
No immediate response followed.
Waiting, Odin settled his hands into his lap, fingering the loose threads on the sleeves of his shirt. He did his best to keep eye contact with his master, but made sure not to keep too much for fear of making him nervous. Though strong and full of pride, who knew how the Elf would respond to an unfaltering, questioning gaze.
I know I don’t want to find out.
“Odin?”
“Yes sir?”
“To answer your question, no—I don’t know why I laid there without responding to you. I have to tell you something though, something that might explain some of my odd behaviors. Are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“There are times when, for no reasona t all, my mind will go blank—just like that. It’s almost like I’m closing my eyes to go to sleep, but without actually sleeping in the process. When I wake up, I’ll have no recollection of when exactly I laid down, nor will I remember the last thing I saw or did beforehand. It’s like… I can’t explain it. It’s like when you take a cloth and wipe a dusty table. The dust is gone, but the table’s still there, even though what was covering it is gone. Are you following me?”
“Yes sir.”
“There’s something else, Odin… I have to ask you something though. If I tell you this, I want you to promise to keep it between the two of us.”
“You know I—”
“You can’t tell Nova, your magic teacher, the mages, Parfour—
anyone
you think you know or may not know. You’ll promise me that even if someone puts a knife to your throat, even if someone threatens to cut you open piece by tiny piece or even if the king himself demands your deepest secret, you
will never
tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”
“You know I wouldn’t, sir.”
“This isn’t an occasional thing.”
Odin frowned.
What?
Had he heard correctly?
“Sir,” he said, “What are you—”
“This happens more than I’d like it to, Odin. Do you understand?”
“No. I… I don’t see what you—”
“There are times when I’ll fall asleep and won’t wake up for days.”
“Sir, what’re you—”
“You heard me, Odin. I’ll lay down to go to sleep, but I won’t wake up the following morning. Sometimes I won’t wake up for days on end, maybe even months. I—”
“But you wake up
every
day. You—”
When he doesn’t talk, when he doesn’t say anything, when he’s cooking dinner or when he’s staring at things you can’t see. When he—
“Sir… are you saying—”
“Yes, Odin. When you’ve woken to find me staring out at something, I may not have really been there.”
A tangible thing made of everything and nothing slithered up his spine and curled around his neck. Baring its fangs, its tongue slicked across his throat and prepared to inflict the final, deadly blow. Poison of the greatest, truest quality would flow throughout his body and destroy his mind, but leave him concrete and pure, and while he would still be there in body and essence, where would that leave his mind, if only in a dark, beautiful place? Would he go where Miko went? Would he go
anywhere?
Where, exactly, would he go?
“Back then,” Odin said, “when you were watching the firebugs. You’re saying that you couldn’t… that you weren’t able to—”
“I couldn’t see anything, Odin. I wouldn’t have even known about this had you not told me.”
“What happens then? What happens when you go to sleep and you don’t wake up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you go somewhere you normally can’t see, or maybe you don’t go anywhere at all. Maybe you’re just simply
there,
existing as though nothing’s happening around you.”
“Sir… if you don’t know where you are or what you’re doing when this happens, how are you able to talk or walk around?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe instinct takes hold of my body and uses it in the way it needs to, or maybe I’m really speaking, moving and doing everything else without being aware of it.”
“Why haven’t you asked for help?”
“Because for the longest time, I thought I was out of my mind, Odin. There were days I’d wake up expecting to be next to my friend or lover only to find them gone—vanished, apparently, never to be seen again. I’d rise and make my way out into my choice of dwelling, seek out a friend or companion and ask where they’d gone, then come to find out that the person I held more dear to my heart than anything else in my world had been gone a long time. Dead, they’d say, but sometimes in the rarest, most special of instances they’d say they’d simply moved on, afraid of who or what I’d become when, in fact, I’d become nothing. I’d simply stopped seeing the world for a much longer time than I thought.
“To answer your question, Odin—no. I don’t know what happens during these times. I don’t know what happens inside me, I don’t know what happens around me, I don’t know what happens to the world or the things I exist in. I don’t know anything. Maybe this is why I always feel so tragic. Maybe this is why I seem like such a sad, helpless being.”
Odin didn’t know what to say.
In the distance, a bird chirped, singing the coming of a new day.
Nearby, a chipmunk hopped onto a log and idly nibbled its nut, then skittered away just as quickly when it realized there were three humanoids nearby.
No more than a foot away, buried in the depths of his head, Odin came to a realization.
It realy was true.
Sometimes, when you closed your eyes, you could wake up in an entirely different place, in an entirely different time.
Fear grew deep.
It spread its roots.
It sowed its seeds.
If only he could tell his knight master that he’d experienced the same thing no more than a day ago, maybe then he could close his eyes at night and dream without worry.
Plush sand parted beneath their feet the moment they stepped on the beach. Distantly aware of the presence of ringing bells, Odin raised his head and scanned the area, searching for the monks that would surely be nearby. When he saw none, however, he couldn’t help but frown.
“Something wrong?” Nova asked, setting a hand on his back.
“Where are they?” Odin replied.
“Who?”
“The monks.”
“Don’t know, “Nova laughed. “How come?”
“I can hear bells.”
“So can I,” Miko whispered.
“That must mean they’re nearby then,” Nova shrugged, shifting his pack further up his shoulder.
“You can’t hear that?” Odin asked.
“Uh… no. That’s kind of what I implied.”
“Sorry.”
“No need to be. It’s obvious you two have better hearing than I do. No complaints from me.”
“Let’s keep going,” the Elf murmured, stepping forward. “We don’t want to disturb their ritual.”
No,
Odin thought.
We don’t.
Though he had no idea what might happen should they cross the monks’ path, he didn’t want to find out.
Taking the initiative, Odin adjusted his slacking pack and continued to follow the Elf across the beach. Nova at his side, the ocean all the more present, he breathed in the clean, salty air and trembled at the sight of such a monstrous entity. Memories of his past breathed new life into his conscience with the simplest of actions. The chill his mind, the waves his thoughts, the breeze his doubts and the ocean his worries—it took little for the beautifully-violent thing to stir his heart.
Butterflies swarming around his head, he thought of a boy and what a year could have done to him.
Parfour.
“Sir,” Odin said, quickening his pace to keep stride with the Elf. “How are we going to ask Beal if you can take Parfour as your next squire?”
“Simple,” Miko said. “I ask, they accept.”
A brief flash of the Elf’s white teeth appeared from beneath the hood of his cloak.
“Sir?”
“There’s no need for them to argue their case with me, Odin. If I ask to take one of the boys and they refuse, I threaten them.”
“Threaten them?” Nova frowned. “What’re you—”
“Oh no,” Odin said. “You’re not saying—”
`”I’m afraid so, Odin.”
“Wait a minute!” Nova said, stopping in his tracks. “What’re you two talking about? What’s wrong?”
“They’re abusing these children, Nova.”
“What? Why—”
“Parents send unruly sons to the islands,” the Elf said, “to show them how much they have—to teach them that they really do have a loving home even though they may think otherwise.”
“The sick bastards.”
“Do you not wonder why the boys would not make eye contact with us or why we barely saw them, if at all, despite the fact that this is a monastery?”
“They were praying,” Odin mumbled. “That’s what they said. That’s why we never saw them. We… we didn’t—” He lost control of his words. Hand tightening to a fist, he reached down and took hold of his sword, rage burning in his heart and flames spouting at the front of his vision. “I’ll kill them,” he breathed. “I swear on my mother’s grave, I’ll kill each and every one of them.”
“Your heart is in the right place, Odin. Sadly, your mind is not.”
“That’s why they were so wary of us,” Nova said, turning his head to look at the two of them. “That’s why we were always being watched.”
“Or scrutinized. Yes.”
“That’s why Parfour didn’t want to do anything that might get him in trouble,” Odin whispered, no longer able to control his shakes. “That’s why he didn’t want to get caught when we were on the beach.”
“Odin—”
“This isn’t right!” he cried. “They can’t get away with this!”
“Nor should they,” Miko sighed. “Odin, there’s nothing we can do at the time being. You’re not a knight, nor do you have the legal authority to take the boys or apprehend the monks. If you tried to take them now, in your current state, you’d be arrested for vigilantism. I dare not think what would happen to me as both your guardian and an untrusted, frowned upon Halfling should someone report us to the authorities as kidnappers.”